The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (Millennium #5)

It is with real pain I write this because the Lizabeth Salander stories have been one of the great reading joys for me in recent years. When Steig Larson died and David Lagercrantz took over, I was apprehensive. His first attempt was ok, but this one is a mess. From its incoherent and sloppy organization to its plethora of undeveloped characters, Eye for an Eye is an embarrassment. For the first time, Salander is a lesser character. In fact, the emergence of the twins promoted them as more interesting, and even they, by the end, have been cast aside. The ploting is very strange. We are thrust forward and backward time after time, with no real sense of linkage or development. Chapter titles like June 20 or x years before make no sense, and the reader lurches around like a juggling ball. I suppose a greedy publisher and a lousy editor make a good team here.

Simply one of the worst books ever written. To see the degradation of the series, do a quick re-read of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and then read this fifth in the series. Plot and character fail on every level. Most insulting to the reader, though, is the jumpy writing in the last half of the book. Lagercrantz slingshots the reader from one time period to another every few paragraphs and from one character to another the same way. New characters are introduced late in the book, and others are dropped for 10-15 segments. The last 50 pages was like swimming through peanut butter.

The brilliant sociopath Lisbeth Salander is surely the most imaginative and affecting series character to emerge in 21st century fiction – and she’s the fascinating focus of Larsson’s original trio of novels and of Lagercrantz’s gripping revival “Girl in the Spider’s Web.” So it’s an inexplicable letdown that she’s a minor player in this 2nd revival … she’s offstage literally 95% of the time and does little that’s remarkable or compelling when she does appear. Instead we get a crowded cast of new bad guys and tepid returns by the likes of Holger Palmgren, the elderly lawyer, and Mikael Blomkvist, journalist & God’s gift to women.

The plotline centers on a psychiatric con game involving twins separated at birth. It has the distinct feel of an old narrative initially written for characters other than Larsson’s, Lisbeth & Co. being substituted at the urging of Lagercrantz’s editor – much as Raymond Chandler reworked his early pulp thrillers to include Philip Marlowe. Here the makeover is a failure – Salander is perfunctorily written, hazily motivated, and barely there … shifts in viewpoint are as incessant as a facial tic … there’s far too much telling instead of showing … the pace is tortuously slow till the home stretch … and my ultimate reaction is extreme disappointment.

Verdict: Boo. Don’t bother..

If you’re desperate for a Salander fix it might suffice, but it is a really poor substitute for the first 3 novels.

Larsson’s characters might have been a bit cliched or caricatured, but at least he developed them and you felt a connection to them. By comparison Lagercrantz characters are lacking in any development. He relies solely on dramatis personae lists at the beginning of the novel and readers memories. This makes Lagercrantz’s characters feel a little more real since there is nothing cliched, but that is a false impression as they are tissue paper copies. To those who say of course Lagercrantz’s style is different because he’s not Larsson fail to understand the duty an author assumes when he takes over another author’s world. Brandon Sanderson did a great job taking over for Robert Jordan and showed the due care required. Lagercrantz is just doing his thing with Larsson’s world. The suspense style of the first 3 is different, the chapter flavor text is an integral part of the first 3, and even though the characters are over drawn he makes you care about them and their interplays. Lagercrantz tries to skate through this one with recycled ideas from an early novel in the series and shoddy character development. This is my last new Salander novel unless another author takes up the Salander world.

I read this book with great hopes, having quite enjoyed David Lagercrantz’s previous book in this series, The Girl In The Spiders Web – his first since carrying on Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series.

However, like a lot of readers I have been disappointed in The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye.

It was good in places, but I really feel this series has now lost it’s way somewhat, and for me this book went off on far too many tangents and side-stories, with far too much emphasis being put on these rather than the main plot, which incidentally I thought was rather wishy-washy and not at all gripping or engaging. It could have been a much more action-packed and enthralling.

And I agree with reviewers who have described the ending as sudden and abrupt – it all seemed to conclude rather conveniently, as if the author was in a hurry to get the book finished and off to the publisher as soon as possible.

So although I have so far loved this series, I think now, with a heavy heart, it is time for me to move onto something else.

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